


Hero

by bad_decisions



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, Gen, Psychological Torture, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 21:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1580300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_decisions/pseuds/bad_decisions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Tamika Flynn becomes perfect and I make far too many references to dystopian novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for torture, thoughts of suicide, drugs, mind control, brainwashing.  
> This is really, really not a happy story.

Most books were banned in Night Vale, always had been. The Sheriff’s Secret Police had tried to negotiate with the Librarians to remove unapproved books from their shelves. Rumor had it that the failed negotiations were why the man they all believed to be the Sheriff never removed his balaclava. The rumors were not very sure why the balaclava could not be removed, but it was _definitely_ a result of whatever unknown thing had happened in the Night Vale Public Library an unspecified amount of time ago, if you believed in things like time and causality and the vulnerability of your own flesh.

Instead, the Sheriff’s Secret Police just arrested anyone who checked out an unapproved book from the library. Which no one ever did, of course. Why would anyone even want to do that?

The Librarians had driven off the Sheriff’s Secret Police in all their numbers, but they ran from her. She’d taught them to fear her, and the rest of her army. And the SSP couldn’t arrest her if she never checked out any books.

She and her friends had caught the flesh-eating reading bacterium last summer, and it had so far proved incurable. They’d figured out how to treat it before the necrosis progressed too far, though not in time to avoid a lot of minor disfigurements.

The treatment was enjoyable and proved very useful as certain events came to pass. It was also pretty obvious from the name of the disease.

They’d started off with legal material, but there wasn’t all that much of it. After training each day, they explored the dark labyrinth of towering shelves in packs, fighting off Librarians and the lingering reluctance to break the law, sampling the works, growing bolder and bolder.

They’d found what genres they liked and disliked, what good writing actually was, and as a group decoded Shakespeare.

Dystopian fiction was one of the most popular sections. This probably had a lot to do with how illegal it was at first, but later how useful and relatable and inspiring it became.

She was wise beyond her years; they all were, because they’d lived a thousand lives between the pages of a thousand paper universes.

Stories and words fed the bacterium, and fed their minds, and they learned the power of them. They realised their own power if they could learn to wield such weapons.

They told each other stories while they sparred, wrote poetry between missions, honing their minds as they honed their knives, until they could think as accurately as they could shoot.

They found strength of their own in the characters they loved.

They did so many things and they laughed and planned and hoped.

It would be like in the books, they’d told each other. They would fight and Night Vale would fight with them and StrexCorp would crumble. Once they took the first step, everyone would follow. They’d be free, not like they’d been before, but properly.

 

Looking back, she cries. She cries for Night Vale and their cowardice; she cries for those who died fighting; she cries most of all for those who didn’t. She cries for her army, and she cries for herself.

Alone in her cell, she cries for what should have been.

She pounds her fists bloody on the walls she can’t see, yelling and sobbing. It’s useless, everything is useless, she’s useless, but she doesn’t stop. Her fingers crack and her flesh tears and she doesn’t stop because she’s lost everything and what does it matter now if she mashes herself into a pulp.

They’d been right, when they’d said it would be like in the books. They’d been too right. It just isn’t the stories that ended happily.

 

As she waits in the dark, it is Hamlet. She is clever, even at thirteen. She knows the truth of her failure. She had chosen to be, to take arms against the sea of troubles, and now the slings and arrows are coming and she is afraid. What will they do, and how much can she suffer before she breaks? If she had the choice now, she would choose not to be.

 

As they draw sharp metal across her skin, it is 1984. She is loyal and brave, but she is only thirteen. Blood runs across her skin instead of under it and she screams and screams and in the end it is true – some things you can’t stand up to. Some things you can’t even think about. She doesn’t give a damn what anyone else suffers, all she cares about is herself. She betrays everything.

 

As she is held from sleep by flashing lights, as voices whisper persuasions from unseen sources and she loses all track of time, as she feels herself losing her grip on reality and sanity and her own thoughts, it is A Clockwork Orange. She is a person, and she is young. She doesn’t know what that means anymore.

 

When she emerges at last, it is Brave New World. She is smiling, and she is old enough to be a productive employee. Everything is good and perfect and fulfilling, and there is nothing at all underneath. The world is perfect and hollow and rotten and meaningless, and she fits in perfectly. She is perfect. Her smile stretches a little wider. Her eyes are empty.

 

One night, one day, when she has forgotten to take her medicine, the tiniest part of her old self, her imperfect self, her true self, will return to her. She will think that maybe it could be The Iron Heel. Their rebellion failed, but perhaps another will succeed. However many years or decades or centuries it might take, she will allow herself to hope that one day things will be better. Someone will find the poetry she and her old friends wrote when they were still themselves, on a day when all that she tried to fight for has been realised. The people of the future will read her words, and they will not understand, because they will not know what it’s like not to be free.

She will never forget to take her medicine again after that, and that will be the last time she really feels anything.

It will be the last time she is alive.

She will never know what happened to any of the rest of her army. She might pass one of them on the street, but if she does, neither of them will recognise the other.

She will die one day.

No one will remember her.


End file.
